Many products are shipped and sold in concentrated form to reduce shipping costs, storage space, and shelf space. For example, in the case of citrus juice and other beverages, it is cost effective to first concentrate the product by removing a substantial portion of the juice's water volume at the point of manufacture, and then ship it to the place of sale in concentrated form. Many different types of containers are used to package concentrated products. For example, composite foil-fiber cans are widely used to package concentrated citrus and other fruit juices. However, these cans are expensive to make, difficult to open, and it is difficult to remove the content because the can's rigid sidewalls cannot be easily squeezed to "milk" the product out. One advantage of the foil-fiber can is that after the can's contents have been removed, it can be conveniently used as the means for accurately measuring the amount of water that needs to be added to the beverage concentrate for proper reconstitution.
Flexible pouches are an example of another type of container used to package concentrated products. The flexible pouches are made of two superimposed flexible films that are sealed together about their peripheral edges and therefore relatively easy and inexpensive to make. However, it has been found that consumers generally do not use the empty pouch as the means for measuring the amount of fluid that needs to be added to the concentrated product, but instead use a separate device such as a rigid measuring cup. It is believed that this habit is primarily because such pouches are flexible and therefore difficult to grasp and pour from with confidence that the pouch will not collapse when the pouch is full of fluid. Commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 4,898,477 issued to Cox et al. on Feb. 6, 1990 and which is hereby incorporated herein by reference discloses a self-expanding flexible pouch that can be used as a measuring device for reconstituting a concentrated product contained within the flexible pouch. The flexible pouch includes an extensible stay located in the throat area of the pouch. When the pouch's top portion is removed, the extensible stay expands, thus opening the pouch's throat area. The consumer can then "milk" the concentrated product out of the flexible pouch. The opening of the pouch's throat area allows the consumer to reconstitute the fluid by adding water to the pouch and then pouring and mixing the concentrated substance previously "milked" from the pouch. The Cox et al. pouch has the advantage of self-expansion of the pouch's throat area after removal of the pouch's top portion. The pouch disclosed in Cox et al. works quite well in expanding the throat area of the pouch after initial opening. However, if the self-expansion tendencies of the Cox et al. pouch's throat area could be increased, it would aid the consumer in removal of the product from the flexible pouch and during the reconstituting process.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an extensible stay creating greater self-expansion tendencies in the flexible pouch's throat area;
It is further an object of the present invention to provide an extensible stay that will assume a predetermined configuration upon opening;
It is further an object of the present invention to provide an extensible stay that is easy to assemble;
It is still another object of the present invention to provide an extensible stay that accomplishes the aforementioned objectives at minimal cost.